1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a knee protection system which can protect with a knee protection panel the knees of an occupant of a vehicle which move forward at the time of collision of the vehicle. When the vehicle is colliding, the knee protection panel is driven towards the rear of the vehicle from a standby position, where it is surrounded by vehicle interior member, by a driving mechanism so as to be disposed in front of the knees of the occupant.
2. Description of Related Art
Conventionally, as such knee protection systems, there is a knee protection system described in JP-A-4-278858. In this knee protection system, when a vehicle comes into collision, a servo drive mechanism is activated to drive a knee protection panel rearward for protection of the knees of an occupant of the vehicle which move forward.
In the conventional system, however, the knee protection panel itself is strongly connected to a movable portion which is adapted to move rearward when the servo drive mechanism is activated. Due to this, with a construction in which the knee protection panel is accommodated in such a manner as to be surrounded by vehicle interior member when in the standby position before the activation of the knee protection system, the following problem has been caused.
Namely, in order to allow the drive mechanism to hold the knee protection panel which is driven rearward to thereby stop motion of the knees when the drive mechanism is completely activated, the drive mechanism needs to be strongly mounted on the vehicle body. On the other hand, a visually attractive break needs to be provided between the knee protection panel and the interior member in the standby state before the knee protection system is activated. Namely, the knee protection panel needs to aligned with the interior member when in the standby state. However, since the interior member is formed from synthetic resin or the like, a dimensional error tends to be easily produced in the fitting of the interior member to the vehicle body. Due to this, with the knee protection panel being strongly connected to the drive mechanism, which is fixed to the vehicle body, when the knee protection system is mounted on the vehicle, various adjustments need to be performed for various components including the knee protection panel so as to have a visually attractive break between the knee protection panel and the interior member. As a result, the mounting work efficiency of such a knee protection system is deteriorated.